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Capital Area Transit board eyeing cutting bus service to West Shore as of July 1

Updated on May 12, 2017 at 6:33 AMPosted on May 11, 2017 at 8:04 PM

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Capital Area Transit board may be facing a decision to cut bus service to Cumberland County soon unless a disagreement over consolidating with neighboring transit agencies can be worked out with Dauphin County and Harrisburg.
(File photo/PennLive.com)

Nearly 3,000 Capital Area Transit riders from Cumberland County could be left at the bus stop come July 1 - or not.

According to CAT's interim director Tony Johnson, that is what will happen, along with 23 employees losing their jobs, based on the revenue it will have available to fund the transit agency's 2017-18 budget.

On Thursday, the CAT board approved by a 5-1 vote a $21 million budget with Clapsadl casting the dissenting vote. The spending plan relies on a $931,819 local match from Dauphin and Cumberland counties and Harrisburg in order to qualify for $8.5 million in state funding. Passenger fares and other revenue from advertising on buses and federal aid account for the remainder of the revenue needed to balance the budget.

Clapsadl pointed out CAT has some money that was advanced from Cumberland County sitting in an account that is enough to cover its share of the local match through September.

Capital Area Transit interim director Tony Johnson said the CAT board will have to decide on May 25 at to which bus routes to cut and expects they will be ones that serve Cumberland County. Jan Murphy | jmurphy@pennlive.com

Maybe so, but Johnson said it needs the commitment that Cumberland County will pay its full 30 percent of the local match to receive $2.7 million in state funding. Without the commitment, he said CAT has no choice but to make $3 million worth of service cuts.

The board meets next on May 25. At that meeting, Johnson said the board will have to make a decision as to which routes it will cut and he expects those will be the ones that serve Cumberland County.

"At some point, the Cumberland County service would probably be recommended for cuts because they are not paying their fair share," he said. "So the buses going to Cumberland at some point will stop and literally that should happen around July 1, not September or October."

Before bus routes can be eliminated, there's a requirement for a public comment period. So between that requirement and contractual obligations to the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1436 to give a 30-day notification of employee layoffs, Johnson said that is why the board needs to make a decision quickly as to what direction it wants to move.

Clapsadl insists Johnson is painting a picture that is more dire than it actually is. He said if the board moves forward with its plans to cut bus routes to Cumberland County, "we'll have to deal with those scare tactics. It'll be a matter of countering to educate the public about what the real time line is."

If layoffs were to occur, John Keller, president of the employee union, said most of them would be fixed-route drivers. He expects the number of layoffs that would occur actually would be closer to 30.

Nonetheless, he said he isn't convinced any layoffs or bus route cuts will happen. He doesn't believe lawmakers or the governor would allow it.

"The elected officials could very well be playing a poker game and trying to push each other's buttons and some higher power is going to step in and take control of all this and resolve it," he said. "Because I can't personally imagine how you are going to discontinue running buses on the West Shore when there's a lot of people on the West Shore who need to come into the city to get to their place of employment" or other East Shore destination.

Clapsadl elaborated on the number of reasons why Cumberland County has objections to the budget but mainly he said the commissioners don't see it as one that doesn't plan for or reflect any regionalization effort or steps.

The budget increases CAT's spending by 5 percent and adds some executive positions that Cumberland officials consider unnecessary. At the same time, it is cutting service by 8 percent. No fare increases are included.

The way Clapsadl sees it, CAT's board has four to five months before anything needs to happen. He said if CAT would agree to regionalize its operation with rabbittransit and Red Rose Transit, Cumberland will agree to make its local match.

Consolidating with those transit agencies would lead to more efficiencies, broader access to bus service, fare stabilization, and less redundant service since buses from one transit service can't pass up passengers in areas served by another transit service, Clapsadl said.

Dauphin County isn't opposed to the idea of consolidating with other transit agencies, but it wants to looks at all the consolidation options, said Dauphin County Chief Clerk Chad Saylor, who is one of the county's CAT board representative.

"Cumberland County is intent on destroying CAT and flushing it down the toilet and forcing everyone's hand to do what they want to do in terms of consolidation," he told PennLive in an earlier interview.

Without those sides unable to agree to a common vision about what regionalization will look like, Johnson, "you can't move forward."